Your school board vote
On October 26 you also elect a school board trustee, not just a mayor and a councillor. It's the most overlooked race on the ballot, largely because no one explains it. Here's the explanation, and why it's worth marking even if you don't have kids in school: the board spends one of the biggest public budgets in the region, it's on your property tax bill, and its decisions close schools and reshape whole neighbourhoods.
What you're voting for
You elect one or two trustees, depending on your board. Which race is on your ballot depends on your school-support designation, the box on your property assessment that says which system your education taxes fund. There are four, and most Londoners are in the first by default: Ontario sets your designation to English-public unless you actively choose Catholic or French.
the biggest: six London trustees, elected in three two-seat zones
SEE CANDIDATES →five trustees, one per area
SEE CANDIDATES →one trustee
SEE CANDIDATES →one trustee
SEE CANDIDATES →Not sure which is yours? Your property assessment notice, or MPAC's online lookup, tells you. MPAC ↗
Don't know your ward? Look it up by postal code.
Who's running
Every trustee candidate on the official list appears here, with the same treatment as the council races: contact links, any certified prior election record, and the same questionnaire, adapted to what a trustee actually controls. Nominations closed August 21, 2026, and the City certified the list on August 24.
Who decides what
| WHO CAN CHANGE IT? | YOUR TRUSTEE | THE PROVINCE |
|---|---|---|
| The board's budget | ✓ | ✗ |
| Where schools open and close | ✓ | ✗ |
| Hiring the Director of Education | ✓ | ✗ |
| Busing, the school calendar, codes of conduct | ✓ | ✗ |
| Curriculum | ✗ | ✓ |
| The funding formula | ✗ | ✓ |
| Teacher contracts | ✗ | ✓ |
| Province-wide testing (EQAO) | ✗ | ✓ |
A trustee can lobby on the province's side of the table — but can't change it.
So a candidate promising new curriculum or smaller classes is promising what isn't theirs to give. Ontario education ↗
The catch: the province is running Thames Valley right now
Bottom line: Thames Valley is currently run by a provincial supervisor, not its trustees. The trustees you elect in October may hold reduced power until supervision ends — and there's no set end date. The full story is below; the Catholic and French boards are running normally.
This is the part that's not on a lawn sign. After the board went from a $3.5M surplus to a $17.3M deficit, the province put Thames Valley under supervision on April 23, 2025. A ministry-appointed supervisor now makes the decisions trustees normally would, and has already cut 42 administrative jobs.
The province's own investigation called it a structural deficit — spending built in above revenue, so the gap returns every year and won't close on its own — with no single cause. The board over-projected its enrolment (a $15M hit that also left it over-staffed on teachers it couldn't unwind), drained its reserves from $45.9M to $3.1M to plug the gap, and absorbed unfunded costs like staff absenteeism (around $27M) the province wouldn't cover. Despite the headlines, it wasn't mainly about executive pay or a staff retreat: those were the trigger for the investigation, not the cause.
Fifteen months in, the finances have not turned around. The board budgeted a $10.6M deficit for 2025-26; its next preliminary budget projects $22.1M, more than double, with over 150 staffing reductions including nearly 60 early childhood educator and educational assistant positions. Both budgets were produced under supervision, since trustees no longer hold that authority. Thames Valley is not alone: Ontario placed four more boards under supervisors in June 2025, and a year later all four reported deficits again. No public report yet shows supervision closing the gap it was sent to close.
Two recent provincial laws then widened that control over every board. Bill 33 (royal assent November 2025) expanded the province's power to investigate and take over any school board. Bill 101, the Putting Student Achievement First Act, 2026 (royal assent 2026), went further on governance: it caps boards at 5 to 12 trustees, shifts teacher-contract bargaining from the trustee associations to a staff-led provincial body (the Council of Ontario Directors of Education), and makes the board's director a CEO whose decisions trustees can no longer overrule by vote. The question isn't who's in charge, it's who can actually fix it. The trustees you elect in October may hold reduced power until supervision lifts, and there's no set end date.
Only Thames Valley is under supervision. The Catholic and French boards are running normally. Ontario oversight ↗
How to be heard (you don't have to wait four years)
A vote every four years isn't the only lever. Most people don't know they can:
- Email or call their trustee. Every board lists contact information.
- Speak to the board. At the Catholic and French boards, you can register as a delegation and address a meeting in person. At Thames Valley, public meetings are suspended under supervision, so input goes in writing to the provincial supervisor through Board Services; the in-person process returns when supervision ends. TVDSB public input ↗
- Read the record. Thames Valley posts every motion the board has voted on, back to 1998. Board Motions Index ↗
The tools exist. Most people just never learned they do.
What to ask the candidates
Any candidate can say this race matters. These are the questions that make them get specific. Bring them to a debate, a doorstep, or an email.
- With a provincial supervisor in charge, what exactly would you push for in year one, and how?
- Name one budget line you'd protect and one you'd cut.
- What's your concrete plan to end supervision and restore elected control?
- If a school near you were slated to close, what would you actually do?
- On the issues that sit with the province, not the board, how specifically would you advocate?
- How do people reach you, and how often will you report back?
Also on your ballot
The most overlooked box on your ballot
The school board controls one of the biggest public budgets in the region, and its decisions close schools and reshape neighbourhoods. Yet it’s the race no one explains, which makes it the one most likely to be left blank. That’s the opening: where fewer people weigh in, the ones who do carry more weight. You don’t need to be an education expert. You just need to mark the box that’s easiest to skip.
Check it yourself
Every source on this page links out: the Board Motions Index, the provincial supervision and financial-investigation reports, Bill 33 and Bill 101, and the City's official candidate list. Don't take our word for it, read the primary documents.